Mary Lou Williams plays like a man! gender, genius, and difference in black music discourse

South Atlantic Quarterly

Volumn 104, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 445-462

  Rustin, Nichole T ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60950626997     PISSN: 00382876     EISSN: 15278026     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00382876-104-3-445     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. Charlie Parker, Hear Me Talkin'to Ya!.ed. Nat Hentoff and Nat Shapiro (New York: Dover, 1955). 355.
2. Ralph Ellison, "Living with Music," in Living with Music, ed. John F. Callahan (New York: Modern Library, 2002), 61.
3. Herman Gray, "Black Masculinity and Visual Culture," Callaloo 18 (1995): 401.
4. See Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, "African American Women's History and the Metalanguage of Race," Signs (Winter 1992): 251-74.
5. Melba Liston, Smithsonian Oral History Collection, Washington, DC, p. 38.
6. Barry Ulanov, "Mary Lou Williams," Metronome, July 1949.
7. Farah Jasmine Griffin, If You Can't Be Free, Be a Mystery: In Search of Billie Holiday (New York: Free Press, 2001), 15-16.
8. Farah Jasmine Griffin, "When Malindy Sings," in Uptown Conversation, ed. Robert O'Meally, Brent Hayes Edwards, and Farah Jasmine Griffin (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 104.
9. See Angela Davis, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday (New York: Random House, 1999), especially chapters 5 and 6, which focus specifically on the sexual politics of Holiday's "love songs" and the social critique embedded within "Strange Fruit." Griffin, If You Can't Be Free, and the documentary Strange Fruit (California Newsreel, 2002) explore a number of these concerns as well. Eric Porter's discussion of Abbey Lincoln's growth as a singer examines how Billie Holiday's aesthetic choices shaped Lincoln's vision of what was possible as a singer and composer, revealing as well how Holiday's choices are given meaning as black feminist praxis.
10. Judith Halberstam, "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Men, Women, and Masculinity," in Masculinity and Feminist Theory: New Directions, ed. Judith Kegan Gardiner (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 345.
11. Marian McPartland, "Mary Lou: Marian McPartland Salutes One Pianist Who Remains Modern and Communicative," Down Beat, October 17, 1957, 12.
12. See Vijay Iyer, "Exploding the Narrative in Jazz Improvisation," in O'Meally, Edwards, and Griffin, Uptown Conversation, 393-403. Iyer offers a compelling analysis of the kinesthetic and sonic dimensions of musical practice.
13. Ruth Feldstein explores this dynamic in her book Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1935-1965 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000).
14. Mary Lou Williams, "Music and Progress," Jazz Record, November 1947, 23-24.
15. See John Edward Hasse, Beyond Category: The Life and Genius of Duke Ellington (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 263.
16. Paul Bowles's review in the Herald-Tribune ("Duke Ellington in Recital for Russian War Relief," January 25, 1943;
17. reprinted in Mark Tucker, ed., The Duke Ellington Reader [New York: Oxford University Press, 1993], 166) illustrates the mixed reaction to the composition.
18. Celebrating Ellington's proven talents at conducting, arranging, and performing, Bowles approved of Ellington's ability to keep to the integrity of early jazz. However, Bowles found Black, Brown, and Beige "formless and meaningless ... a gaudy potpourri... corny... trite - The whole attempt to view jazz as a form of art music should be discouraged." John Hammond wrote that Duke Ellington "unfortunately ... took to heart" the praise of "serious composers" who decried the restrictions placed on his talents by "dance tempo and the thirty-two-bar form." Black, Brown, and Beige suffers from incoherence, according to Hammond. "It was unfortunate that Duke saw fit to tamper with the blues form in order to produce music of greater 'significance'" ("Is the Duke Deserting Jazz?" Jazz, May 1943, 15;
19. reprinted in Tucker, The Duke Ellington Reader, 172).
20. Tammy L. Kernodle, Soul on Soul: The Life and Music of Mary Lou Williams (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 108-9.
21. The Record Review, 1947, 24.
22. McPartland, "Mary Lou," 41.
23. "Land of OO-bla-dee," Time, December 12, 1949.
24. Mary Lou Williams, quoted in Linda Dahl, Morning Glory: A Biography of Mary Lou Williams (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 23.
25. Kernodle's Soul on Soul is a phenomenal addition to the critical literature on Mary Lou Williams.
26. Kernodle, Soul on Soul, 20-29.
27. John Williams, quoted in Dahl, Morning Glory, 43.
28. For more on the Theatre Owner's Booking Association, also known as "Tough on Black Asses," see Ted Vincent, Keep Cool: The Black Activists Who Built the Jazz Age (London: Pluto, 1995).
29. Sharon Pease, "She Has a Touch Like a Man!" Downbeat, date unknown, scrapbook 17, Mary Lou Williams Papers, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, hereafter cited as MLW.
30. Alan Lomax, Mister Jelly Roll: The Fortunes of Jelly Roll Morton, New Orleans Creole and Inventor of Jazz (1950; reprint, New York: Pantheon, 1993), 6.
31. Dolores Calvin, "'New Look' Pleases Swing Pianist," source and date unknown, scrapbook 17, MLW.
32. LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), "The Burton Green Affair," in Black Music (New York: William Morrow & Company, 1970), 136.
33. Duke Ellington, Music Is My Mistress (New York: Da Capo, 1973), 169.